Facts: Conley hit a kid in the
face with a wine bottle. The victim
broke his jaw and permanent negative effects.Conley was found guilty of aggravated battery on the basis that the victim
suffered permanent injury.The defendant
appealed, arguing that the State failed to prove there was a permanent
disability and that Conley intended to cause a permanent disability.

Issue: Primarily, did the defendant
intend to cause permanent disability?

Rule: Under Illinois law, someone intends to do
something when that something is the conscious objective of his conduct.Someone does something knowingly when they
are consciously aware that something is practically certain to happen based on
his conduct.

Analysis: The court reasons that according
to the aggravated battery statute, it must be proven that either it was the defendant’s
goal to achieve a particular harm or that the defendant was “practically
certain” that the harm would follow from his conduct.The court reasons that the circumstances
taken in total suggest that the intent to cause permanent disability could be
inferred.

Conclusion: The court upholds the
conviction.

Notes
and Questions

1.The actus reusof battery is clear, the mens
rea is less clear.Simple battery,
at common law, was a misdemeanor, but aggravated battery was a felony.

2.As far as
result crimes go, intent includes Illinois “intent” and Illinois “knowledge” at common
law.If the example presented occurred in
Illinois, a court might find that Roger killed Zachary with “intent”
and killed his wife with “knowledge”.

3.It seems that
it is usually true that one can reasonably infer that a person intends
the foreseeable consequences of their actions.However, intent cannot be presumed, but rather must be proved beyond a
reasonable doubt.The jury is not barred
from using their common sense.

4.This is very
similar to the concept of transferred intent in intentional torts.Dressler and others argue that transferred
intent is unnecessary to obtain a just result.They say that even if, for example, the human being killed was different
than the human being the defendant intended to kill, the actus reus and mens rea are
still present under the common forms of the criminal homicide statute.The difficulty arises, Dressler argues, when
you try to transfer intent not only between different victims, but different
crimes.This holds in torts, but it is
argued it ought not in criminal law.In
the case where a defendant intends to kill a woman but instead causes the death
of a fetus after it is born, there are some word problems.D intends to kill a human being.The fetus is not a human being (under, for
example, California law) at the time of the stabbing.However, the fetus is a human being at
the time of its death.I see this as
analogous to a situation where D runs through X with a sword and doesn’t see Y
standing behind X.Say X only gets
wounded but Y gets killed.D should be
convicted of intent-to-kill murder of Y.Therefore, by analogy, D should be convicted of intent-to-kill murder of
the fetus.I don’t see a problem with
this.If D intended to murder someone,
and someone got murdered, and D was the cause of their death, then D should be
convicted of their murder.

5.D could
absolutely be convicted of two murders.Again, if D runs through X with a sword, and Y is standing behind X and
D manages to kill both X and Y, D should be convicted of two murders.In the case where Y is merely wounded, D
should be convicted of murder and attempted murder.In the other case, D should be convicted of
attempted murder of X and murder of Y.If D intends to kill someone, I don’t think the consequences of D’s
actions should have much bearing on D’s conviction and punishment.In fact, a utilitarian might make an argument
that the penalty for attempted murder should be just as high as that for
murder.If I was going to argue against
the application of transferred intent, I would argue first that transferred
intent is properly the realm of torts and should not be applicable to the criminal
law.Next, I would make a retributivist
argument that if D didn’t mean to do something to a particular person, D shouldn’t
have to pay for what he did to that person.Finally, in terms of policy, I might argue that unbounded use of transferred
intent would uncontrollably increase the number of prosecutable crimes and
criminals and would overwhelm the justice system.

6.There are
three types of “general intent/specific intent” dichotomies: (1) “General
intent” may refer to an offense for which no particular mental state is
mentioned in the statute.“Specific
intent”, on the other hand, could refer to an offense that sets out a
particular mental state as part of the crime.(2) “Specific intent” may also mean the mens rea element of “intent”
or “knowledge”, whereas “general intent” may mean “recklessness” or “negligence”.(3) Furthermore, “general intent” may mean
any mental state that only relates to the acts that constitute a crime, whereas
“specific intent” would mean, in this case, a special mental element above and
beyond the “general intent”.When you have
a specific intent crime, there are typically three types: (1) intent to commit
a future act, (2) proof of a special motive, and (3) proof of awareness of
attendant circumstances.

A.Here, there is
specific intent to commit a future act: the “intent to steal”.

B.This is a “general
intent” crime.

C.This is a “specific
intent” crime which requires knowledge of the attendant circumstance that the
property is stolen.

D.This is a “specific
intent” crime which requires the intent to commit a future act: the “intent to
commit a felony”.